In a home refrigerator, it is often the case that the cell structure of the lamellae is destroyed by freezing. There may appear to be some conflict between drying for morphological study and freezing and drying as you describe for optimal DNA preservation; but appearance of conflict is just that - “appearance.”

Traditional drying of the majority of the material and drying of a narrow sector (pie slice) of the cap for DNA sequencing can both be accomplished from even a single fruiting body. I don’t think that we need to sacrifice the use of any of our taxonomic tools. It seems to me that we can have our cake (except for a little slice); and we can eat the data from the whole cake, too.

In the Great Smokies Fungal ATBI fresh gills [EDIT] and desiccant crystals went directly into centrifuge tubes and thence into deep freeze. The rest of the material was place into a dryer.

In many cases we can get DNA from both the frozen and non-frozen, dried samples. I imagine there will be cases in which the material didn’t go into the dryer quickly enough; and we will find that we can’t use that material for much at all. Even well-dried material that is conserved in a humid herbarium will become very difficult (or impossible) to use for purposes of DNA extraction.

I appreciate your input, Martin. Those of us who rely on a widespread group of people to extend our ability to sample to many geographical regions benefit from having collectors aware of both the fragility of the microscopic anatomy (hence, a need for quickly using a traditional dryer) and the fragility of DNA when exposed to excess heat and to moisture.

Please weigh in if this comment is not helpful to your goals – but Elsa – the easiest way to kill larve is to freeze them. Put the fruit body, dry or not, in the freezer. No bugs. DNA beautifully preserved. This might damage the morphology from Rod’s perspective. You can wrap them in paper towels and cover them with silica gel and keep them in the refrigerator before or after you freeze them and they will dry in better shape than if you put them in a conventional dryer.

I have collected in Norway, Scotland, England, France, and the Netherlands. I have seen very white specimens that were called “rubescens” in Norway. I have been sent one from a pine plantation in the Canary Islands, and I have seen pictures in Italian mycological books.

The white specimens I have seen all are very reminiscent of [EDIT] the North American Amanita novinupta, which is largely known (to me) from the coastal states and provinces of Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.

I am very curious to know more about the rubescent taxa of the world…and how many of them there may be.

I’m going to wait for this one to dry, and I’ll send it too, separately but in the same package (again, if I will be succeeded in drying). Some gills are intact, I think, only larvae attacked the fleshy parts like you said, you can always discard it.

Larvae are unavoidable; however, their DNA doesn’t keep us from getting fungal DNA from the mushroom. Also, they are mostly in the fleshiest parts of the mushroom, not the gills; and, therefore, they probably don’t affect the spore size and shape very much. The age of the fruiting body is much more of an influence in terms of screwing up spore size and shape.

I know what you’re talking about concerning the larvae jumping out of the mushroom in the dryer. I tend to get small collections of larvae in my dryer…their meals were interrupted in a dreadful manner.

Baterial or other decay of the mushroom is another matter. Such specimens are indeed useless and will only make a mess in the dryer.

Insect larvae always come before me. I think you don’t want one attacked with it, so, large and healthy specimens is very difficult to find. I have the others dried, but even those had little larvae (I only so them dried, after jumping from the specimens). I’ll send them as soon as possible.

I am very interested in largely white specimens to which the name rubescens is